Biography

McGehearty majored in math at the University of Texas at Austin. He went on to earn his master's in Computer Science. McGehearty then received a Ph.D. from Carnegie Mellon University. His professional career has been working as a computer scientist.[1]

Issues

Campaign themes

2014

Excerpt: "The central issue facing our nation right now is our weak economy. We have the highest sustained unemployment rate since the Great Depression. The Tea-publican controlled House of Representatives repeatedly stalls action on any program to help the economy and improve the outlook for jobs. Even worse, the Tea-publicans have brought the government to shutdown once and the brink of shutdown several times."

Minimum Wage

Excerpt: "Having a meaningful minimum wage is fundamental defense for America’s middle class. Without a floor on wages, a wage crash would occur during every economic down cycle. Businesses flooded with unemployed workers would offer less and less to fill their few openings and force current employees to take pay cuts."

Food Stamps and Unemployment Benefits

Excerpt: "Recent action to reduce food stamp benefits and to allow long term unemployment benefits to expire is the wrong way to go to rebuild our economy."

Social Security and Medicare

Excerpt: "We have a shared responsibility to protect Social Security and Medicare. These benefits are earned through decades of honest work. If these earned Social Security or Medicare benefits were to be sharply cut, most older people on fixed incomes are not going to have reasonable options."

Taxation Fairness

Excerpt: "Income is income. That should be a self-evident statement. Yet, for some reason, the Barons of Wall Street have managed to convince some that “capital gains” and “dividends” are somehow worthy of special treatment. Instead of paying the normal tax rate on this income like everyone else does, they only have to pay 20%. In addition to getting this low tax rate, this income is also excluded from Social Security and Medicare taxes."